Faux News Barely Covers #TrayvonMartin Story

Color me unsurprised.

Hat/tip to Think Progress

WATCH: Obama Comments On #TrayvonMartin Case

Ho-Hum: Another Day, Another Black Boy Murdered

Trayvon Martin was shot at point blank range by a
white guy who said he felt "threatened" by the 17-year old

Ugh, here we go again. There's another case of an unarmed Black male being shot dead by a non-Black person (what a shocker, it's a white guy!). The twist in this case is that the Black male was carrying an ice tea and a bag of Skittles while the shooter is 28-years-old and not a cop, but a "neighborhood watch" vigilante with a 9mm gun.

Charles Blow of the New York Times recounts the facts of the case:

Trayvon had left the house he and his father were visiting to walk to the local 7-Eleven. On his way back, he caught the attention of George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch captain, who was in a sport-utility vehicle. Zimmerman called the police because the boy looked “real suspicious,” according to a 911 call released late Friday. The operator told Zimmerman that officers were being dispatched and not to pursue the boy. 

Zimmerman apparently pursued him anyway, at some point getting out of his car and confronting the boy. Trayvon had a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. Zimmerman had a 9 millimeter handgun.The two allegedly engaged in a physical altercation. There was yelling, and then a gunshot. 

When police arrived, Trayvon was face down in the grass with a fatal bullet wound to the chest. Zimmerman was standing with blood on his face and the back of his head and grass stains on his back, according to The Orlando Sentinel. 

Trayvon’s lifeless body was taken away, tagged and held. Zimmerman was taken into custody, questioned and released. Zimmerman said he was the one yelling for help. He said that he acted in self-defense. The police say that they have found no evidence to dispute Zimmerman’s claim.

 Zimmerman has not been charged with any crime more than 3 weeks after the incident. Of course this raises several questions in the head of most observers. Blow goes on to list just a few:

Why did Zimmerman find Trayvon suspicious? Why did he pursue the boy when the 911 operator instructed him not to? Why did he get out of the car, and why did he take his gun when he did? How is it self-defense when you are the one in pursuit? Who initiated the altercation? Who cried for help? Did Trayvon’s body show evidence of a struggle? What moved Zimmerman to use lethal force?

Another columnist, Leonard Pitts, Jr. writing in the Houston Chronicle lists some more questions:

How can you get out of your truck against police advice, instigate a fight, get your nose bloodied in said fight, shoot the person you were fighting with, and claim self-defense? If anyone was defending themselves, wasn't it Trayvon Martin? Would police have been so forbearing had Martin confronted and killed an unarmed George Zimmerman? 

Is this really a racial Rohrschach test? Do white people and black people see this case differently? If you wonder why Black people don't trust in "justice" in America, the names Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant and nowTrayvon Martin are just a few of the reasons.

Celebrating 100th Anniversary of Bayard Rustin's Birth

Martin Luther King, Jr (left) with Bayard Rustin, one of the key architects
and organizing strategists of the Afrcan American civil rights movement

Today is March 17, 2012, the centennial of the birth of Bayard Rustin, a giant in the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality, and an openly Black gay man. Rustin is well-known as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "right hand man," the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington where King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. Rustin was also one of the co-founders of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and a primary organizer of the Freedom Rides of the 1960s.

Despite being the subject of an award-winning documentary called Brother Outsider (available on Netflix), the history and legacy of Rustin is not as well-known as it should be, although that is starting to change. For example, recently the City of Berkeley issued a proclamation in recognition of Bayard Rustin's 100th Birthday, but really an activist of his significance and impact one would expect multiple proclamations from various cities around the country.

Happily, the country's only national Black LGBT organization, the National Black Justice Coalition, has realized the opportunity of Bayard Rustin's centennial and is using it to organize a year-long series of events, in conjunction with the producers of the documentary, that they are calling the Bayard Rustin Centennial Project:

To honor Rustin's courage and his invaluable legacy, NBJC will spend this year celebrating the beloved "unsung hero" through its commissioned Bayard Rustin Centennial Project and in ongoing collaborations with Walter Naegle, Bayard's surviving partner and Executor/Archivist of the Estate of Bayard Rustin. NBJC is also working with Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer, co-producers and co-directors of Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, a biographical documentary that asserts Rustin's significance in American history. The recipient of more than 25 awards, Brother Outsider has been screened at The United Nations, The Kennedy Center, and for Members of Congress. 

"The National Black Justice Coalition is looking forward to spearheading this collaborative movement to bring greater visibility to the invaluable legacy of Bayard Rustin.  We recognize and value that our mission mirrors his life's work - to eradicate racism and homophobia," says NBJC's Executive Director Sharon Lettman-Hicks. 

"Furthermore, his identity as an out Black gay man in the Civil Rights Movement lends validity to our belief that legal rights and protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of all ethnicities are not just civil rights, but human rights, and that Black LGBT people absolutely deserve a place at the table of equality." 

NBJC's Bayard Rustin Centennial Project is honored to join in the year-long series of celebratory events taking place across the country and to build upon more than 30 years of Black LGBT community tributes to the late, great, beloved freedom fighter.

I'm sure that as more people learn about Bayard Rustin, they too will be as inspired by his life and legacy as I was when I co-founded the Barbara Jordan / Bayard Rustin Coalition, a Los Angeles-area Black LGBT community education and social justice advocacy organization in 2006.

Happy Birthday, Bayard!

OSCARS 2012: Streep versus Davis for Best Actress

Much to my surprise, the 2012 Oscar race for Best Actress has come down to a contest between Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady and Viola Davis in The Help. I had previously predicted that the race would be between Meryl and my longtime favorite Glenn Close (who I still think should have won years ago for Dangerous Liaisons) for her gender-bending portrayal of Albert Nobbs. There was no surprise when the official nominations were announced that Streep, Davis and Close were all on the list.

I have made my official predictions for the 2012 Oscars, and I have picked Davis to win, although I think that Streep should win. Davis will win because Hollywood is still predominantly white and "white guilt" is a real force among the Academy. They probably don't even know that's why a significant fraction (perhaps the winning edge) will be voting for Davis. I am not saying that Davis is going to win because she is Black, but I am acknowledging that race is a significant reason why I think she'll win. Additionally, the Academy takes Meryl for granted. They know she does excellent work, she is universally acclaimed as the Greatest Actress Ever, often taking acting to places no one else has ever gone, but fourteen other times they have given an Oscar to someone else. In my mind, familiarity has begun to breed contempt, and it's a crying shame. Meryl deserves this Oscar, she gave the Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for a film released in 2011.

But the Oscars are hardly ever about "the best performance" (whatever the heck that means).

Sasha Stone over at Awardsdaily.com has an absolutely brilliant think piece on the state of the Best Actress race:

When you’re talking about the Best Actress race you are talking about Hollywood history, the status quo and the industry’s unwillingness — and the audiences unwillingness — to shift their perspective. Two of the roles — Margaret Thatcher and Marilyn Monroe are icons in the white community, of course, because no black actress during Monroe’s time could have become Monroe, and no black citizen of Britain could have ever gotten close to being Prime Minister — can you imagine? In all of their history, the BAFTA has never given their top acting award to a black woman. What that says is 1) there aren’t many black heroes whose story Hollywood wants to tell that will sell (they try, audiences ain’t buying). For all of the talk of apartheid and segregation and Jim Crow, Hollywood itself plays that out every year when the Oscar race rolls around. Black women are fine and well to be rewarded in supporting, but lead? That says something entirely different about the power dynamic, doesn’t it? An actress like Viola Davis, despite her training and ability, could never be in Streep’s position because there would never have been a time when she would have been plucked from her world of theater and thrust into the leading lady roles as Streep was. Davis could never have simply bleached her hair blonde in order to accommodate the Aryan tastes of the American public.

Viola Davis in The Help, though, has broken all of the rules and in so doing created one of the most memorable and moving characters of the year. She led a film that made $165 million dollars. She found a way to access her character that far transcended the cliche of the black maid and in so doing she kicked down a wall. No one can make the argument that films with black characters can’t make money off of white audiences.

Maybe she doesn’t get as much screen time as other characters, maybe. But as Davis always does in any movie she’s in, whether it’s a tiny character part, or a decent sized one — she blows that shit out of the water. She commands the frame. She draws you right into her internal world and keeps you guessing about what it is she’s thinking and feeling until all at once her emotions burst forth. I don’t know how anyone can look at the two performances side by side and not lead towards Davis for soul alone.

But I also recognize Streep’s greatness. What she does with The Iron Lady (despite the fact that one really has to only regard it as a portrait and not a great film about that historical figure) is simply genius. She is probably the only working actress in Hollywood that good at nailing voice, movement, and stature of people. Streep disappears into Thatcher. The only key thing missing is who she really was — not what she looked and sounded like, but who she was — what drove her. But perhaps that doesn’t really matter in the end. Perhaps this win for Streep will be to cap off a brilliant career as well as a grand performance. No one is going to complain. On the contrary, she will get a standing ovation.

You really deserve it to yourself to click over and read the entire thing. I will actually be happy regrdless of which one wins. Surprisingly, Davis' biggest supporter for the win is Streep herself, who after working with her in Doubt (which earned Davis her first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actress) talked up her co-star's performance and publicly implored Hollywood to give Davis a leading role. I just feel that there's no question that no other actress in the world could have done what Meryl did in The Iron Lady (with the possible exception of Cate Blanchett or Helen Mirren who can do just about anything, but their Thatcher's would have been quite different but no less compelling). However, I could easily name a good handful of actors who could have brought exactly what Viola did to the role in The Help (Angela Bassett, Regina Taylor, Taraji Henson, Alfre Woodard and Naomie Harris).

I'm not sure Meryl expected Viola to be competing against her so soon, but you could tell that at Screen Actors' Guild awards that Meryl was thrilled that Davis received the award and recognition from her peers, leading the standing ovation when Davis' name was announced. It should be noted that the entire Academy votes for the winners. Although Davis has a clear lead with the Actors branch (the largest branch) it is very possible that other names will be favored by the other branches. It should be noted that the same night that Streep won the Drama Best Actress Golden Globe, Michelle Williams won the Comedy Best Actress Golden Globe

Some have even suggested that this year we may have a repeat of the 2002 disaster where Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York and Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt were considered the frontrunners and 29-year-old Adrien Brody walked away with the prize (presumably because Nicholson and Day-Lewis had split the vote). This year, if Streep and Davis are splitting the vote does that help Close, or perhaps could it help Williams, who is Heath Ledger's widow (and mother of his daughter), to walk off with the prize for her acclaimed portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn?

We'll know the answer on Sunday February 26th.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Black Atheist Public Awareness Campaign

This is great news! African Americans for Humanism has announced a new publicity campaign to raise awareness about the presence of religious skepticism in the Black community. It is not as rare as one might think, a point a recent New York Times article raised that I promoted here on Godless Wednesday a few months ago.

Friendly Atheist alerted me to the ads and supports the campaign, as do I. Apparently they will be running in various major metropolitan areas like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas. Each ad shows a prominent historical African American (it is Black History Month after all!) along with a local Black freethinker.

What do you think?

Prop 8 Repeal Initiative Can Begin Signature Gathering

The organization Love Honor Cherish announced this week that it has been given the go-ahead by the Attorney General of California to begin circulating ballot petitions to repeal Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment which purports to ban people of the same sex from marrying in California.

The text of the amendment is:

This amendment would amend an existing section of the California Constitution.  Existing language proposed to be deleted is printed in strikeout type.  Language proposed to be added is printed in underlined type.

Section 1.  To protect religious freedom, no court shall interpret this measure to require any priest, minister, pastor, rabbi, or other person authorized to perform marriages by any religious denomination, church, or other non-profit religious institution to perform any marriage in violation of his or her religious beliefs. The refusal to perform a marriage under this provision shall not be the basis for lawsuit or liability, and shall not affect the tax-exempt status of any religious denomination, church or other religious institution.

Section 2.  To provide for fairness in the government’s issuance of marriage licenses, Section 7.5 of Article I of the California Constitution is hereby amended to read as follows: Sec. 7.5.  Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Marriage is between only two persons and shall not be restricted on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

The ballot summary is:

Reinstates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.

Summary Date: 12/15/11 | Circulation Deadline: 05/14/12 | Signatures Required: 807,615

Proponent: Thomas B. Watson

Repeals the current provision in California's Constitution that states only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Provides that marriage is between only two persons and shall not be restricted on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Clarifies that the initiative shall not be interpreted to require any priest, minister, pastor, rabbi, or other person to perform a marriage in violation of his or her religious beliefs. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Over the long run, this measure would likely have little fiscal impact on state and local governments. (11-0058) (Full Text)

Of course, Love Honor Cherish also went forward with a signature-gathering campaign in two years ago in Winter 2009-Spring 2010 to repeal Proposition 8 which failed miserably. Gathering enough signatures to get a measure on the ballot in California is a resource-intensive task, not one that has been achieved by a mainly volunteer or unpaid effort in years.

This effort does not have the backing of any of the state's major LGBT organizations (like Equality California and the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center). The proponents have until May 14, 2012 to gather well over a million signatures, in the hopes that 807, 615 will be valid.

I agree that Propsition 8 should be repealed but I do not think that the LGBT community of California has had a discussion about what it would take to repeal Proposition 8 and I think it is incredibly naive and presumptious of one organization to think that they can make the decision for all LGBT Californians to put our rights up for a public vote.

I will not be signing the petition and I urge you not to as well.

Map of Status of Gay Rights in Africa

Joe.My.God links to this interesting map about the state of the law towards homosexuality throughout Africa, provided by ILGA.

Interestingly, friend of MadProfessah.com, Rod McCollum is currently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for an international AIDS conference and is posting some amazing first person reports of his trip on his blog, Rod 2.0. Check it out!

Godless Wednesday: NYT Covers Black Irreligiosity

Praise Allah! No less an important media outlet than the New York Times has recognized that African American Atheists exist! SentientMeat brought this article to my attention and suggested it would be a good subject for a Godless Wednesday post. He reads more things than Cactus and Succulent websites after all.

In a piece published this week titled "The Unbelievers" the Paper of Record examines the (ir)religiosity of Black people in this country:

RONNELLE ADAMS came out to his mother twice, first about his homosexuality, then about his atheism.

“My mother is very devout,” said Mr. Adams, 30, a Washington resident who has published an atheist children’s book, “Aching and Praying,” but who in high school considered becoming a Baptist preacher. “She started telling me her issues with homosexuality, which were, of course, Biblical,” he said. “ ‘I just don’t care what the Bible says about that,’ I told her, and she asked why. ‘I don’t believe that stuff anymore.’ It got silent. She was distraught. She told me she was more bothered by that than the revelation I was gay.”

[...]

African-Americans are remarkably religious even for a country known for its faithfulness, as the United States is. According to the Pew Forum 2008 United States Religious Landscape Survey, 88 percent of African-Americans believe in God with absolute certainty, compared with 71 percent of the total population, with more than half attending religious services at least once a week.

[...]

According to Pew, the vast majority of atheists and agnostics are white, including the authors Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

Seeking a public intellectual of their own, some black atheists have claimed the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, interpreting his arguments against teaching intelligent design in the classroom to be an endorsement of atheism. But Dr. deGrasse Tyson is loath to be associated with any part of the movement. When contacted last week by e-mail, he noted a Twitter exchange he had in August, in which he told a follower, “Am I an Atheist, you ask? Labels are mentally lazy ways by which people assert they know you without knowing you.”

Methinks Dr. Tyson doth protest too much, don't you? Anyway, it's cool that there are blogs like Godless and Black and Words of Wrath as well as organizations like African Americans for Humanism and facebook pages like Black Atheists of America. Hopefully MadProfessah's Godless Wednesday will join this list of Black Atheist resources.

Ha-Ha! Author of SB-1070 Gets Recalled

Ha,ha! This was the most encouraging election result in a night full of heart-warming election results (rejecting Mississippi's zygote personhood amendment, repealing Ohio's anti-union law and rejecting Maine's voter suppression law): the xenophobic author of multiple pieces of immigrant-bashing legislation (but most notably SB 1070), Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce was recalled by voters on Tuesday night.

KPHO reports:

Voters have ousted state Sen. Russell Pearce in an unprecedented recall election, a first for an Arizona legislator.

With a majority of the precincts reporting, the top vote-getter, Republican Jerry Lewis, steps into the District 18 legislative seat for the second year of a two-year term.

Lewis claimed victory at 9 p.m.  "Our opponent was the most powerful politician in Arizona and one who had deep-pocketed and powerful interests from outside our district backing him, as well as the entire muscle from our state Republican Party," Lewis said.

Lewis, 54, a charter school executive, has been a resident of Mesa for nearly 30 years.  His victory now forces the Senate's majority Republicans to pick a new leader for the chamber.

People on both sides of the debate said that removing Pearce would send a powerful message to the Legislature that uncompromising stances on immigration and other issues will not be tolerated by voters.

Pearce, a 64-year-old conservative Republican from Mesa, outspent his challenger by more than a 3-to-1 ratio and painted the recall advocates as liberal outsiders who targeted him because of his immigration stance.

Pearce was unabashedly racist and an asshole and it's a good riddance of bad rubbish. However, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Governor Jan Brewer are still elected officials in Arizona and should be removed from office by voters as well.

Herman Cain Leads Latest NBC Poll

Black Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is now leading the polls for the Republican nomination, breaking out of the single digit pack.

Cain also leads putative frontrunner Mitt Romney in recent polls in Florida, South Carolina, and Iowa..  Surely, a Black man could never be elected President of the United States, right?

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God.

Celebrity Friday: Roland Fryer

Professor Roland Fryer

The 2011 MacArthur Foundation Fellows were announced a few weeks ago. These fellowships are commonly known as "genius"grants. One of the winners this year was Roland Fryer, an Economics Professor at Harvard.

From the official announcement:

Roland Fryer is an economist illuminating the causes and consequences of economic disparity due to race and inequality in American society. Through innovative empirical and theoretical investigations, Fryer has opened up a range of topics to quantitative analysis, offering new insights on such issues as the cognitive underpinnings of racial discrimination, labor market inequalities, and, in particular, the educational trajectory of minority children. In an examination of the longitudinal trends of testing gaps among elementary schoolchildren, Fryer and a collaborator determined that, after controlling for background characteristics, black and white children enter kindergarten at parity, but their achievement gap widens through higher grade levels; in addition, they found that traditional socioeconomic metrics could not account for this gap. In other work, Fryer posited that social network structure could be a contributing factor. Having constructed an index of social status based on a large, national set of demographic data, his analysis suggests that peer-group loyalty sometimes competes with academic performance, particularly in ethnically heterogeneous environments. Recently, Fryer led a randomized experiment with well over 20,000 students from more than 200 schools in three cities, testing several models of financial incentives to see if they improve children's academic performance. Results collected to date indicate that incentives payments alone have no statistically significant impact on subsequent state test scores. These studies, among many others, demonstrate Fryer's propensity to tackle difficult, often sensitive, social questions with scientific rigor. His research is informing the work of academics and policy makers alike, and he is playing a singular and influential role in ongoing discussions about the effects of racial differences in America.

I love seeing Black men officially recognized as "geniuses"! Don't you?Maybe this should become a regular feature of MadProfessah.com, let me know in the comments.

Correlation Of Bigotry With Religious Belief?

Donald Young Beats Monfils To Reach 1st ATP Final

Donald Young celebrates during his semifinal win against Gael Monfils

(photo credit: AP)

22-year old African-American Donald Young came back from 1-4 down in the 3rd set to win his first career ATP tour semifinal match 4-6 7-6(5) 7-6(5) against Gael Monfils of France at the PTT Thailand Open. Young, six years ago was the top junior tennis player in the world but had generally struggled on the ATP tour until this year's U.S. Open where he made the quarterfinals, losing to Andy Murray.

Unfortunately for Young, his opponent in his first tour final will be Andy Murray, who won his semifinal match against Gilles Simon in 3 lopsided sets. Interestingly, this will be the third time Young and Murray have played each other this year, splitting matches.

This is only the second time Murray has played the Thailand tournament, reaching the final both times. Very few players actually win their first tour final, it is doubtful Young will. However, by just reaching the final he shall probably be ranked #43 in the world on Monday, more than 80 places higher than he started the year.

Celebrity Friday: First African Miss Universe Fights HIV

Leila Luliana da Costa Vieira Lopes,
Miss Angola, was crowned Miss Universe

Leila Lopes, Miss Angola, became the first winner of the Miss Universe beauty pageant from Africa this week. I believe she is the first "dark-skinned" woman to win the most famous beauty pageant in the world.

Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper reports:

This is the first time a beauty queen from Angola has been crowned as Miss Universe. She is first black African to win the 60 year-old pageantry. Nigeria’s Agbani Darego won the 51st Miss World pageant in Sun City, South Africa, on 17 November, 2001.


[...]

The brand new Miss Universe, Leila Lopes said she wants to help her native Angola escape a history of war and impoverishment and work towards combating HIV.

Being crowned at the ceremony in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the 25-year-old said that “as Miss Angola, I’ve already done a lot to help my people.”

“I’ve worked with various social causes. I work with poor kids, I work in the fight against HIV. I work to protect the elderly and I have to do everything that my country needs,” she said. “I think now as Miss Universe I will be able to do much more.”

Obama Diversifies Federal Judiciary

Bernice Donald has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be the
first  Black woman on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

Now this is a lovely feel-good story! According to the Huffington Post, the nation's first President who is not a White male has become the first President to have a majority of his federal judiciary nominees be non white males, or "non-traditional."

More than 70 percent of Obama's confirmed judicial nominees during his first two years were "non-traditional," or nominees who were not white males. That far exceeds the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent), according to Sheldon Goldman, author of the authoritative book "Picking Federal Judges."


[...]

Of the 98 Obama nominees confirmed to date, the administration says 21 percent are African-American, 11 percent are Hispanic, 7 percent are Asian-American and almost half – 47 percent – are women. By comparison, of the 322 judges confirmed during George W. Bush's presidency, 18 percent were minorities and 22 percent were female. Of the 372 judges confirmed during Clinton's terms, 25 percent were minorities and 29 percent were women. In these figures, some judges fit into more than one category.

Last week, the Senate confirmed the first African-American woman to sit on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Bernice Donald. Earlier, she was the first African-American woman elected as a judge in Tennessee, the first appointed as federal bankruptcy judge in the nation and first confirmed as a U.S. district judge in Tennessee.

Obama also has doubled the number of Asian-Americans sitting on the federal bench, including adding Denny Chin to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York as the only active Asian federal appeals court judge. There currently are 14 Asian-American federal judges on the 810-judge roster.


[...]


For more than 140 years, there were no females or minorities among the nation's federal judges.

Read that last line again. For the first 140 years (of the 220 years they have been in existence) the federal courts had zero racial or gender diversity. And I'm pretty sure that's just the way Republicans would prefer it to be!

US OPEN 2011: Playing Tennis While Black? #PTWB

The first video above shows the soon-to-be notorious incident which happened at 2-6, 30-40 with Serena Williams serving to Samantha Stosur during the 2011 U.S. Open Women's Final (won by Stosur) for which Serena was assessed a point penalty for deliberate hindrance for shouting "come on" before the point was over. Darren Cahill first posted on Twitter a link to this video of an identical "hindrance" incident with Serena playing Svetlana Kuznetsova two years ago, bizarrely with the exact same referee Eva Asderaki officiating last night. Then it had no more than 600 views. Now it's up to 13,000 and rising LOL. The comments on the second video claim that because Doha 2009 and US OPEN 2011 were played under WTA and ITF rules, respectively, the umpire was correct in awarding a point (and thus a game) penalty to Serena Williams.

Let's go to the text shall we?

The ITF rules on "hindrance" state (Rule 26):

"If a player is hindered in playing the point by a deliberate act of the opponent(s), the player shall win the point. However, the point shall be replayed if a player is hindered in playing the point by either an unintentional act of the opponent(s), or something outside the player’s own control (not including a permanent fixture).”

The WTA rules (pdf) on "hindrance" state:

If a player hinders her opponent, it can be ruled as either involuntary or deliberate. 

1. Involuntary Hindrance 

A let should be called the first time a player has created an involuntaryhindrance (e.g., ball falling out of pocket, hat falling off, etc.), and the player should be told that any such hindrance thereafter will be ruled deliberate. 

2. Deliberate Hindrance 

Any hindrance caused by a player that is ruled deliberate will result inthe loss of a point.

My issue is with the interpretation of the rule. In what way did Serena's scream hinder Stosur in returning the ball? How do Azarenka's and Sharapova's shrieks not hinder the player on the other side of the net? If grunting is not involuntary hindrance than neither should screaming "come on!" If one takes the position that screaming out a word right before one's opponent is going to hit the ball is involuntary hindrance then a let should be played. It was very clear that Serena had hit a winner and was screaming out "come on!" as almost all tennis players do at that point. No human in that position was going to get that ball back in the court. Stosur happened to get her racquet on the ball before it bounced twice but no way was she going to get the ball back into play. If it had been some other event which had interrupted play the umpire should rule that Stosur had no play on the ball and give the point to Serena. But umpires often do interpret the rule (wrongly, in my view) that if the player gets a racquet on the ball (or is even in the vicinity of the ball when the incident happens) then the entire point needs to be replayed.


So the ruling by the umpire was the Serena deliberately hindered Stosur by screaming "come on." This is absolute bovine excrement and must be reported as such. Why is it deliberate hindrance to scream out "come on!" before an opponent hits an unreturnable ball? If the ball WAS returnable, then I think one could rule it was a deliberate hindrance. Because, the player was deliberately hindered from returning it into play. But the ball was not playable so regardless of what Serena said or did that ball was not coming back into play. The bigger question is, why did the same umpire rule differently at the US Open than two years ago at the Doha 2009 tournament, under essentially the same rules in an identical situation? That umpire, Eva Asderaki like the notorious Marina Alves, should never be allowed to referee a Serena Williams match again.


But the bigger issue is with the ability of umpires and officials to make calls which videotape allows the fans and observers to know are incorrect. That is what used to happen with line call and now (thanks to the 2004 U.S. Open quarterfinals match with Jennifer Capriati and Serena Williams when repeated, obvious line calls were made against Serena by Referee Marina Alves) we have electronic line calling. And tennis is much better for it. Ask Maria Kirilenko!

What drives us observant followers, fans and players of the game insane is that there are a LOT of these subjective interpretations of the rules in the game of tennis and more often than not they seemed to be interpreted arbitrarily (or to the detriment of Serena at the U.S. Open). My point is that there should be an increased attempt to REDUCE subjectivity in tennis and have all umpire calls appealable by going to an objective source such as videotape (where available) and then a ruling by the tournament referee using the objective source.

Incidents such as "not up," "foot faults," "non-racquet contact with the ball" are all examples of situations which could be resolved by going to the videotape. You can also find multiple examples where umpires have made questionable (and incorrect) rulings against Serena Williams, Venus Williams and James Blake where the video shows pretty clear that the umpire was in error. What do these players all have in common? Hmmmmm.

There are video cameras in the cars of police officers all around the country to prevent incidents of what is known as "Driving While Black or Brown)." 

All players need the ability to review video of incidents on the tennis court to substantiate umpire rulings!

Until that time, anyone playing in an official match, especially if they have "dark" skin may be subject to an incident of "Playing Tennis While Black"!

Likability Perceptions Vary With Sexual Orientation

Zack Ford over at the LGBT Think Progress blog calls attention to an interesting academic article which explores how the perceived sexual orientation of strangers changes their perceived likability.

The results in "Impressions at the intersection of ambiguous and obvious social categories: Does gay + Black = likable?" are published in Journal of Experimental Psychology:

In one study, 22 women and nine men viewed 104 photos of straight and gay black and white males and rated their likeability on a scale of one (not likable) to seven (extremely likable). Participants were not informed that some of the men pictured were gay. While overall, white straight men were rated as more likable than white gay men, black men were rated in the opposite manner: gay blacks were more likable than straight black men.

"We observed that people judge others based on sexual orientation even if they are not consciously aware of whether someone is gay or straight," said doctoral student Jessica Remedios, lead author. "By understanding how sexual orientation affects the rapid evaluations we form about others, we can learn more about predicting and minimizing the negative consequences of homophobia."

In a second study, 36 women and 14 men were divided into groups to view the same 104 photos. One group was instructed to approach whites and avoid blacks by pulling a joystick toward them when a white face appears and pushing the joystick away when a black face appears; the other group was instructed vice versa, to approach blacks and avoid whites. Among participants approaching whites, the responses were faster for the straight men than for the gay. Among participants approaching blacks, however, responses were faster for gay than straight men. "Given that faster approach responses indicate greater positivity toward stimuli, the second study is consistent with the liking expressed in the first study," says Remedios.

"These findings suggest that sexual orientation, despite lacking explicit perceptual markers, infiltrates the automatic impression that is formed. Further, our judgment of gay men depends on whether they are white or black."

Curious result, eh?

WATCH: Black Gay Group Ejected From Church

The black gay group Jordan Rustin Coalition (which MadProfessah co-founded in 2006) went to the Southern Missionary Baptist Church to have  a dialogue about the Church being a site for petition signing to repeal the FAIR education act and was rebuffed by the Pastor and told to leave the premises. JRC Program Director Milton Davis (Occidental College graduate of 2009) and EQCA Executive Director Roland Palencia are featured in the clip.

Take A Virtual Tour Of New MLK Memorial

Today there's a new National Monument in Washington, D.C., and it celebrates the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. The official dedication will be Sunday, August 28th, the 48th anniversary of King's "I Have A Dream" speech, attended by our nation's first President of African descent, Barack Obama.

You can take a virtual tour of the monument online.

Hat/tip to Bill in Portland at DailyKos.